Lesson 2 - January 17, 2017 - Mastering Luminance - Masking

Working with luminance levels and masks can give you complete control over the color and tonality of an image. Here, my daughter was standing close to a red pickup truck, which is reflecting reflecting into her face and hair. Using curves and masks, I can remove much of that red reflection.

Lesson Description:In this class, we'll review masking techniques we learned in the beginning class, and then go even more advanced. We'll learn what channels and alpha channels are, and begin to learn how to use them effectively in Photoshop. We'll learn how to save time by having Photoshop record a series of steps we do on an image, and then save that as an action or a droplet that quickly replays everything we did on a different image or photo! Then we'll jump into using luminosity masks - a powerful, alpha channel-based way of selecting and modifying particular value ranges in our images. Next, we'll watch a webinar by the author of our textbook - Connie Malamed, and discuss contrast based on this new knowledge of how our brains process images. Then we'll dive into the principle of contrast, and learn how to use the element of line. Finally, we'll nail down some concepts in last week's reading assignment - Getting Graphics.

The YETC is the NASA Regional Educator Resource Center for Utah. It offers all that NASA has for teachers and homeschool parents.

Terabytes of free educational resource materials for teachers that they can freely copy

Access to technology training resources and personal help with technology questions and issues.

Again, we'd like to get the word out to USU students about the great resources we offer them. This could be done as a digital display, an 8.5x11 flyer, a brochure, or an 11x17 mini poster (landscape or portrait). Your assignment would be to design an eyecatching digital signage or 300 DPI print media. Anything produced should have our contact and location information below:

Phone: 435-797-3377

Location: 170 Education Building - Utah State University

Contact: usu.yetc@gmail.com

Website: TeacherLINK.ed.usu.edu

Here are several photos you can use as resources (but are not required to) in your design. The product you design can focus on just a single resource, or all of them - like I've done. My infographic has been seen for a year now - it would be great to have some new images to display.

Digital display I created for the YETC last year. (1920 pixels x 1080 pixels at 72 DPI)

Print poster display I created for the YETC last year. (
28x34 inches at 300 DPI)

Lesson 2 Scoring RubricScores based on a 5 point scale should be interpreted as follows:

0 = incomplete - not submitted - a late submission will only receive 50% of the total possible score

3 or lower = 60% or lower: You had difficulty with this. Yes, it flopped! It's OK, try again and get a better score!

3.5 = 70%: Not a total flop - there's some good things going on - but it still needs some work! Try again and get a better score!

4 = 80%: Passable - but not professional yet. Worth a re-work and resubmission